This is all you need to build up perfect wheels! Well, to be honest, this, and a lot of patience. I always find very funny the people who think you cannot build anything half-decent unless you have 1/100th mm dial gages on your truing stand

About 15 years ago I sent a great day with Roger Musson he instructed me in the art of wheel building. He is still one of the best wheel builders I have come across. At the end of the day I had two brand new self built touring wheels and one of his truing stands. It is still in regular use whenever a wheel needs building or repairing.

Logged

Most people tip-toe through life hoping the make it safely to death.Home

I found it more difficult to build the stand than to build wheels!I've never been very good at woodworking so, after 1 frustrating afternoon in the garage, I bought a Minoura stand and dishing tool.I have seen Meccano and Lego built truing stands on the internet, which is more my ability.

Anyway, good work. There is nothing mystical about building wheels. Just follow Rogers instructions in the book in a methodical way and you should be cranking out top quality wheels in no time.

One tip (I can't remember if it's in the book or not): before doing the final tension and truing, put the rim tape, tube and tyre on the wheel and inflate to 100 PSI. Then do the final tension, truing a dishing. I've had wheels lose 40% of their tension when a tyre was put on, and the last rear wheel I built went out of dish when the tyre was pumped up!

I always put on the rim tape before tensioning the spokes. There's a good reason for that, I learned it from Jobst Brandt: a spoke that snap during tensioning could easily fly through the room, and eventually through your eye!

Really impressed...I took one look at the photo of Musson's stand in his ebook and immediately threw in the towel. Really love Musson's attitude and approach. The instructor on my mechanics course recommended him as the only thing you need to learn how to build good wheels. As well as the time, patience and attention to detail he has, of course.My great uncles only ever used pitch to check tension. On my mechanics course we used a tension meter. However, I found that if I was really careful, followed all the advice, didn't try to skip, then the final tension check showed the spokes were pretty well equalised. When, for various reasons, I behaved differently eg rushed, got distracted, etc, the final wheel was true, but goodness me, those spokes were at sixes and sevens. So as Musson says, a tension meter won't build you a good wheel. It sure showed me how bad a wheel I could build, though.

It really wasn't too difficult to build, just took a bit of time. Mine was very hastily made on a black & decker workmate in between looking after children either in the kitchen or on the patio and it turned out just fine.

The component parts were sawn up using a jigsaw from bits of plywood and mdf I had lying around in the shed.

The only part that needed a 'specialist' tool was routing the two channels but you could drill a series of holes and file them out or use a coping saw as an alternative.

The dropouts are not made from metal, as suggested in the book, but 2 pieces of 3mm perspex (the same width as used for the radial and lateral gauges) superglued together. The only thing you need to watch out for is the perspex shattering when drilled, as happened to me.

Started building my wheel tonight only to be thwarted by having been sent only 29 spokes by rose bikes, I need 32! Hopefully the missing 3 will be shipped quickly and I can get on with the build. I found getting the lacing pattern correct easy enough.

I also need to fettle my nipple driver which proved to be too wide for the eyelet recesses.

Looking forward.to seeing the wheel build. I need to start mine, but have been thwarted by late nights. Resorted to polishing frame last night after applying hammering to paint chips on Monday. Need the audax reassembled quick... And that needs the new rear wheel.

A shame about the missing spokes. I just finished my first wheel. An Exal Lx17 on a Hope Rs Mono rear hub. Hub with a view to weatherproofing and rim as it matched the front dynamo wheel. I put a Schwalbe One Tubeless on it tomorrow and hopefully get the rest of the bike built back up. Might even ride around the block...

A shame about the missing spokes. I just finished my first wheel. An Exal Lx17 on a Hope Rs Mono rear hub. Hub with a view to weatherproofing and rim as it matched the front dynamo wheel. I put a Schwalbe One Tubeless on it tomorrow and hopefully get the rest of the bike built back up. Might even ride around the block...

Very pleased and learnt a lot.

Well done! So that was your first wheel build then?

Spokes should be here tomorrow according to the tracking, DHL taking their sweet time, rose posted on Wednesday.

I want to get it built in the next couple of weeks so that I can give it a good test before my first 300 at the end of April.

A shame about the missing spokes. I just finished my first wheel. An Exal Lx17 on a Hope Rs Mono rear hub. Hub with a view to weatherproofing and rim as it matched the front dynamo wheel. I put a Schwalbe One Tubeless on it tomorrow and hopefully get the rest of the bike built back up. Might even ride around the block...

Very pleased and learnt a lot.

Well done! So that was your first wheel build then?

Spokes should be here tomorrow according to the tracking, DHL taking their sweet time, rose posted on Wednesday.

I want to get it built in the next couple of weeks so that I can give it a good test before my first 300 at the end of April.

Yes, first build. I think my spokes would have benefitted from being 1 or 2mm shorter, but it still tensioned up to about 130kgf without any trouble. Took a couple of goes to get the basic tensioning close enough to make truing easy, but now it's in the frame it runs as well as any other wheel I've got. Chain and bar tape tonight and quick spin around the block ,then guards and rack on and some more miles over the next few weeks.

I've booked the Mull of Kintyre 600, and expect to use this bike if I feel up to starting, so needs some shakedown beforehand.

Also, I've mounted up Schwalbe One tubeless tyres front and rear and they seem to work fine on the LX17 rims. I'll spend a bit of time being ginger, but hoping that they will work OK and that I'll be fully tubeless (until n+1 comes along)

I finally completed the wheel tonight and I'm delighted with how it turned out. Lateral trueness and dish are about as close as I'm ever likely to get. Radial trueness isn't quite so good but well within the tolerances suggested in the Musson book. The spoke tensions appear to be very even too. I'm optimistic that this will be a good wheel.

By carefully and methodically reading the instructions in the book the build turned out to be reasonably straight forward, really only requiring time and patience. I re-read a lot of the book until I felt the salient points had sunk in.

Obviously the proof is in the riding, which I should get to do pretty soon.